I've been on a semi vacation of late, doing no programming, but I've been playing the part of producer a bit. Planning and playing with excel.

Game Textures.I've been seeking to improve the graphics of the game, namely the textures. The textures will be brought a bit up to date with the latest standards. Normal maps, shine, Physic based rendering.Now, textures is something I haven't given much thought too. I have my hands full with writing missions, programming the game, creating weapons and internal modules and more and more to start learning how to do textures.So I leave the textures in the hands of someone with the know how.

MissionsI've finished writing up the main mission. It's currently 12 parts, but I might reduce that number if i feel its too long.The main mission involves around gathering the 12 parts of the Dii Consentes( The 12 parts of the A.I. needed to fix the wormhole). I've written hopefully interesting scenarios which complicate the players effort to gather the parts. Its no simple fetch missions. The parts are coveted by various factions and some of the parts might have gone a little crazy.

It's interesting to write missions for space scenes. Since space is a open area, its not like I can create dungeons to explore, but I can create interesting areas using the clouds, asteroids, derelict ships and space anomalies.Although I've done some experimentation with an huge hollow asteroid, which sort of is a dungeon... I successfully navigated a single ship through the huge asteroid, So I'm pretty sure a asteroid dungeon will be part of the game, maybe more than one.

FactoriesFactories have been added to the game. They allow you to use various materials to construct whatever is available in the game. Ammo, drones, missiles, modules and weapons. The Idea is that you find blueprints in the game and you use your collected materials to construct special items. The factories work, but you can only construct simple things currently. I've been playing with the idea of allowing the player to construct ships, but ships would require a rather gargantuan ship with a lots of material for construction, like the Homeworld ship. You would need a home base of some sort. There are huge ships in the game. Mobile trade stations which the player could own and operate. (Not as trade stations). It's a thought.

Ship captureThere are boarding drones in the game. They have not been implemented yet. But the idea is that they would be a one shot deal. Fire the boarding drone at a target, hope it hits. It will then burrow its way through the armor. More armor more time, Once through a internal battle will rage inside the ship. The bigger the ship, the more drones you will need.If you manage to take over the ship, you will have a ship with no captain, 3 crew members and an on board A.I(Hacked to serve you).With a low crew member number your ship will operate rather badly.As you can currently only control six ships at a given time, any new ship would be moved to your ship reserves.

Boarding dronesBoarding drones will not only be used to capture ships. They will also be needed to board various ships, stations and other interesting places. It's basically a boarding shuttle.For ship capture they will be a one shot deal, but for other purposes it will be reusable.

DialogThe game will contain a rather lot of dialog. I am thinking of trying to reduce it a bit. So it won't consume the player time and attention. Currently in the Alpha demo, there is audio for Captain Octavius. Please note that this does not mean that all the dialog will have audio. Audio is expensive. I'm planning on having the audio like in the original Fallout games.Only selective characters will have audio. Other will be text only.

I've been thinking about changing the window for the dialog. The current one works fine, but is limited by its size.Its a bit cramped down there in its little corner. Maybe add a little popup window.I'm trying to make it fit into a standalone resolution.